Hate daylight saving? Don’t tell Linda Larson

Daylight saving time isn’t a very popular practice, if you check Linda Larson’s inbox — but that’s the wrong place to send your thoughts if you’re not in her riding, something she said she has had to remind numerous opponents.

Since introducing a bill last year to end the time changes, Larson said she has received dozens of emails from vocal opponents, as well as one supporter, of daylight saving time.

The Boundary-Similkameen MLA first entered her bill to end the unpopular practice in December, but that legislative session closed as of Feb. 13 this year, with the new session beginning later that day.

“So I put it back on the floor, again, last week,” she said with a laugh.

“And I will keep doing that. It’s on the floor, obviously as a private member’s bill. And it’s sort of out of my hands from that perspective, other than, if people support the idea of stopping this idea of flipping back and forth, they need to contact their local MLAs or the government itself.”

Larson said her strategy is to keep introducing bills to end daylight saving time until something passes, and she doesn’t appear to be alone in her drive to end the biannual time change.

“The Kamloops group that put together a petition of over 25,000 people, I know they actually have some meetings in Victoria coming up with ministers to promote the case,” she said. “I put it out there from the perspective of the government side, now it’s up to the public to continue the talk.”

And Larson said she has seen the public doing just that.

“Tons,” she said of the support for the topic. “I get (emails) from all over the place.”

But Larson said emails sent to her office from outside of her riding are misplaced — after all, she doesn’t need convincing.

“When I get one, I immediately say ‘please flip this to your local MLA and to the ministers,’” she said.

When she first introduced the bill last year, the emails ranked in the dozens, and received “only a handful” of new emails since introducing the second bill last week.

“I do know there’s huge interest in this topic, and I have yet to find anybody — I think I’ve had one that wanted to keep doing it,” she said. “So, I’m going to say 85 to 90 per cent are very favourable.”

When asked, Larson said she would not follow the suit of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, who tweeted emails and messages from B.C. supporters of the oil fields sent to her office following the B.C. government’s proposal to halt increases in bitumen exports while studying the environmental impacts of bitumen in water.

“No, you know, people are pretty much behind this, and of course, it’s not just British Columbia,” she said.

“There’s a huge movement right now to stop it, so I’ve basically said to government ‘B.C. can be a leader, step up and do it.’”